Former Auburn LB Greene finally sacks HOF

Former Auburn linebacker Kevin Greene will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame next week in Canton, Ohio.(Photo: Associated Press)

Canton would call Kevin Greene sooner or later.

Pat Dye was certain of it.

“When you’re the all-time sack leader for outside linebackers in the NFL, I don’t see either way they could keep him out,” he said. “You think about all the great pass rushers that’s been in the NFL, and he’s No. 1, Lord have mercy.”

Greene waited 12 years, but as Dye figured, he’s made it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame — finally.

Ranked third all-time in the NFL with 160 sacks, the 53-year-old Greene will be enshrined Aug. 6 in the 2016 class that includes Brett Favre, Orlando Pace, Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., Tony Dungy and the late Ken Stabler and Dick Stanfel.

“To think I’m one of a few to have received this honor, it’s humbling,” Greene said during a media conference call this month. “It’s humbling.”

Still, Dye feels embarrassed that he didn’t know who Greene back when he showed up at Auburn.

Greene first tried to join the Tigers as a walk-on in 1980, but eventually went into the military. Out of Granite City, Illinois, Greene weighed 200 pounds at the time and Dye was a head coach at Wyoming.

So in Dye’s defense, he wasn’t there when Greene initially showed up at Auburn. Dye became Auburn’s head coach in 1981. He mostly recruited the South so Illinois was certainly out of his recruiting radar.

Two years later, Greene came back to Auburn 30 pounds heavier, stronger, but just as fast.

Surprise. Surprise. Surprise.

“The thing that sticks with me about Kevin is how shocked I was to see someone with that kind of talent and I didn’t even know who he was,” said a laughing Dye. “That’s the truth. He just showed up. We didn’t recruit him.”

Now Greene will forever be known as one of the greatest football players ever. A fifth-round pick in 1985 with the Los Angeles Rams, Greene had 10 seasons in which he had at least 10 sacks.

“In all my years of coaching, after him and before him, I’ve never been around anybody that worked harder and more determined to be successful than Kevin Greene,” said Joe Whitt Sr., an assistant under Dye who was Greene’s linebacker coach. “Without question, that’s what made him.”

Dye recalls asking Greene on his radio show a few months ago about “what set him apart.” Greene’s answer, coupled with his speed, strength and playing with passion and rage, defined him as a player.

“He said, ‘Coach, I studied film day and night. Eight out of 10 plays, I knew where the ball was going before they ever snapped it,’” Dye said.

Student of the game.

“I studied every film in our game plan leading up to Sunday whenever we played,” Greene said. “I studied all the cutups and I was really good of understanding personnel groupings and what teams liked to do out of certain personnel groupings. I had what I call formation recognition. I recognized the formation at the line of scrimmage based on the personnel groupings that was on the field.”

That quality enabled Greene to wreak havoc against some of the NFL greats including most notable player in the 2016 HOF class — Favre.

“Brett liked to run the naked bootleg and a lot of times, he’d like to run it right before the red zone,” Greene said. “He likes to run it with the ball on the left hash or defensive right hash. So I’m telling him all this stuff and I said, ‘I caught you couple of times on the naked bootleg because I was able to anticipate plays.’ He got big giggle out of that.”

Whitt noticed that quality about Greene at Auburn. As a senior, Greene tallied a team-high 10½ sacks in 1984 and won the Zeke Smith Award as the team’s defensive player of the year.

“He wanted to learn, he wanted to be successful and was absolutely going to be successful,” Whitt said.

Fifteen years later, Greene posted 12 sacks for the Carolina Panthers in his 15th and final NFL season — a feat he attributes to good fortune, learning how to pass rush and how he lived his life.

“I was blessed with great health,” Greene said. “I never suffered a major injury as a player in the NFL. The game is based on physical brutality. Most people don’t make it to their fourth or fifth year. I was able to stay healthy. I never had a knee operation and that right there, I can safely say with conviction, it’s a miracle from God. The good Lord blessed me to stay healthy.”

While it always seemed as if he played out of control with that blonde hair flying out the back of his helmet, Greene had a method to his pass rushing madness.

“I figured out how to pass rush by studying and being a student of the game,” he said. “Understanding angles. Understanding leverage. Understanding the speed of the game. I really figured out how to pass rush. I figured out how to put a guy at offensive tackle that was three or four inches taller than me and outweighed me 80 to 100 pounds, I figured out how to put him in a position of failure.”

Greene showed that ability at Auburn way before he ever played one down in the NFL.

“He was stronger than anybody on our football team and faster than anybody on our defensive side of the ball,” Dye said. “We didn’t have anybody who could block him. Nobody had anybody who could block him rushing the passer. He was a little bit stiff as far as changing direction, but he had the great natural ability from a strength and speed standpoint. You couldn’t play any harder than he played.”

Greene also said those practices at Auburn set him up for success at the next level.

“What we went through down on the Plains in the early '80s, literally, lasted me a lifetime in the NFL,” he said. “When I showed up as a rookie in L.A. with the Rams, fifth-round draft choice, I was moving, I think, head and shoulders quicker than any other rookie was moving all because of the practice work ethic that I learned under Pat Dye and his staff down at Auburn.”